On the 15th Alan Ellis of Oink was declared not guilty. Oink was quite simply the best music-oriented bittorrent website. I was a member for a long time before the feds shut it down. It was the only place you could find the rare shit like Deep Six or East West Blast Test. I hope it gets started back up, there are still a lot of torrents I’m looking for that you can’t find anywhere else.

I saw a report on the news today that really pissed me off. It was about a couple that couldn’t conceive, so they went to a surrorgate. The surrogate had twins, and the adoption went forward as planned. While in court, the judge asked if the mother had ever been convicted of a crime. The woman explained that she had a severe psychotic disorder with depression and anxiety (I’m guessing either schizoaffective or bipolar), and that lead to a substance abuse problem for which she got into legal trouble. (This is very common among psychotics.) The surrogate initially said the adoptive parents were fit to take her twins.

After thinking about it for some time, however, the woman decided she didn’t want the children living with a mentally ill mother. She went to court and got the children back. She was able to do this because the state they live in doesn’t recognize surrogacy contracts (I think it was Michigan) and changed their names.

This is ridiculous! Being mentally ill isn’t grounds for losing your children. The surrogate said, “What if she stops taking her meds?” This woman has been med compliant for NINE YEARS. She’s not going to just randomly decide that she doesn’t need them any more. If someone’s been med compliant for that long and is showing no symptoms, a relapse is highly uncommon. Besides, her husband had no mental illness (at least none that they reported), so in the event that the woman did have a relapse he could care for the children while she was getting well agin. The adoptive parents have no legal rights in this case, by the way. It’s done.

I can’t believe this! As someone with a mental illness, it infuriates me. I am outraged. This is just an example of the stigma we face, despite the massive amounts of information available for people to peruse. This is discrimination plain and simple. It is just plain wrong.